Today there are very few businesses, or you can say no businesses that don’t use digital marketing to boost their sales. Every industry has become competitive and real estate is not left behind. From the start, it was a competitive market, but with 3 million licensees in the US makes it more competitive.
Hence, it is essential to combine digital marketing and real estate to be ahead in the cutthroat market. So, in this article, we will help you understand the top trends in 2023 for real estate digital marketing. Moving ahead, you will first learn what to keep in mind while creating your digital marketing strategy and then trends to look out for!
How to create a real estate digital marketing strategy that drives desired results?
When creating a marketing strategy for real estate or any market, you have to first define the following things:
- Goals
- Target audience
- Channels you will use
- Type of content
- Budget
Define goals
Before making any marketing plan, it is necessary to understand and define your goals. What do you want to achieve? Real estate solely works on two things marketing and focusing on leads, missing one can lead to no work scenario. Hence your marketing plan should focus on improving the database, increasing referrals, enhancing lead conversion, and creating brand awareness.
Target audience
After goals, you should figure out your target audience. Not every person on this planet is your target audience. If you cater to a specific location, people wanting to buy or sell houses will be your target audience. Also, don’t just focus on getting new potential clients, keeping the past clients informed and updated will get you a business.
Channels to use
Well, there’s no specific answer to this, as you should market yourself or your company on all the platforms from search engines to social media channels. You might get leads from the email you have been sending or people who are searching for real estate agents on the internet.
Type of content
You can go with multiple types of content and make optimal use of blogs, video content, and even image content. All the content together will help you get leads. Blogs can educate your potential customers about your brand or things to keep in mind while buying or selling a house. Video content can reach your audience and give them a virtual tour of their dream house, and images can promote your open houses and listings.
Budget
Now, as a marketer, you will also have to set aside a budget for your digital marketing campaign. Be prepared to spend at least 50% of your budget on paid ads to attract more attention and leads. And rest will go into creating content and marketing it across different platforms.
It is recommended that as a real estate agent, you should set aside 7%-8% of your total sales (if $5 million) for marketing in a year.
With this, you now know what things to keep in mind while creating a digital marketing strategy for real estate. Now let’s move ahead with the top real estate marketing trends in 2023!
Top trends combining digital marketing and real estate in 2023
In today's digital age, real estate and digital marketing go hand in hand. With the rise of technology, it has become essential for realtors to combine digital marketing with real estate to reach a wider audience and amp up their sales.
Hence, real estate agents and professionals must stay up-to-date with the latest trends in digital marketing too. Undoubtedly, creating an effective digital marketing plan is a daunting task, but with these trends, you won’t be falling behind.
1. Make a responsive and user-friendly website
Your website is the foundation of your digital marketing strategy as it is a representation of your online presence. The website should be responsive, which means users should be able to use it on all devices, without any inconvenience.
Along with that, make sure your website is easy to navigate and appealing to look at. You don’t want your potential customer to move away without signing up or contacting you, or do you?
An ideal user-friendly and responsive real estate website should have the information organized in a way that is easy to understand. You can add a search function that allows users to filter results based on location, price, and other criteria, making it easy to find the right property.
2. Leverage search engine optimization (SEO) for real estate
After making a website, the next step is to make it visible to search engines and in favor of its algorithm so that you can leverage the benefits. Confused? There are thousands of websites that have the same services as you, so how can you stand out among all of them? With the help of search engine optimization. SEO can help you rank higher in SERP (search engine result page) and get converting leads.
Let’s say, if someone searches for the term, “top real estate agent in Texas,” you would want him to come to your website. Right? And for that, you have to optimize your website for the keywords related to your business, create high-quality content, and build the authority of your website through various SEO tactics.
3. Go for paid ads to get quick results
Paid ads, Google ads, or PPC campaigns can help you achieve the desired result in a short span of time. Let’s just say it is more effective. You can use different platforms like Google AdWords or Facebook Ads to run a PPC campaign.
You can create an ad campaign to target potential clients based on their location, age, and interests. You can use paid ad campaigns to showcase your latest property listing and target it to people who have shown an interest in similar properties in the past or just market yourself as a realtor to improve your database and create brand awareness.
4. Create an Email marketing campaign
Email marketing is one of the best tactics to incorporate into your digital marketing plan. Why? The ROI on email marketing is $42 for every $1 spent. Yes, it seems surreal but is true. Also, the average open rate and CTR for real estate email marketing are 21.7% and 3.6% respectively.
However, it is not necessary, you will also have the exact same rates and results. The key to reaching this average number is to be consistent and create the personalized email content. No one likes to read general content. Make your email easy to understand and fun to read, you can inform your clients about new listings and upcoming open houses or even educate them about real estate trends.
5. Create social media channels
Social media marketing is yet another effective way to generate leads along with creating brand awareness. Social media is a place with billions of users waiting to consume your content. You can connect directly with your potential clients via social media and that too multiple at once.
Create your social media accounts on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others. Build your community and create a strategy based on the platform’s nature of interest. You can share your milestones and achievements more on Twitter and LinkedIn and create informational and promotional content for Facebook and Instagram.
6. Start making and marketing your content
Once you have developed your website and created a social media account, you need to start creating content consistently and market it wisely to get attention. Content marketing can help you reach your target audience through different means and modes. The form of your content will change as per the platform and trends in the market.
You can create high-quality and informative blog posts to rank higher on search engines, while through videos you can showcase the property listed or the home buying and selling process to your target audience. You can also opt for images, carousel posts, and infographics to have diverse and engaging content.
7. Promote yourself as a brand
Would you ever hire a real estate agent you haven’t heard of or don’t know anything about him or can’t find anything about him? Most probably never. This is one of many reasons for establishing your brand and marketing it as one of the most trusted real estate agents.
How can you do so? Showcase and educate your clients about you, your mission, vision, and even unique selling points. Keep branding consistent across all platforms from social media and websites to yard signs and freebies giveaways. You can create a brand of yourself and help people consider you for luxury property real estate agents or for general ones. It all depends on how you promote yourself with the help of content.
8. Manage your online reputation
Having an online presence also comes with a huge cost of having a negative impact. There are chances someone does your negative marketing and it will ruin all the efforts you added till now. Hence, a real estate professional needs to maintain and manage an online reputation.
Start with responding to customer reviews with prompt and professional comments, and address any negative feedback. You can also share testimonials of your previous clients through an image or even video form.
Create a highlight on your Instagram page showcasing reviews and feedback. You can also create polls and questionnaires (Ask Me Anything) for your followers to know you better and keep your reputation intact among your audience.
9. Develop more video content
Last but not least is developing more video content. The trends in digital marketing keep changing and evolving as per the algorithm updates of search engines and social media platforms.
The recent boom is seen in the video form content. As per the report, video content on social media platforms receives 1200% more shares than text and images. Hence, your properties are likely to get more exposure with videos than images.
You can create video content for almost everything from giving virtual tours of properties to educating your target audience about real estate industry trends. You can also inform your potential buyers and sellers about the open house in the upcoming month or week.
Ace Up with Digital Marketing and Real Estate
With this, we come to an end to the article real estate digital marketing trends. We all know, digital marketing has been growing consistently for the past few years and is also helping businesses strive in this competitive market. Hence merge your efforts in both digital marketing and real estate to boost your sales. With the real estate digital marketing trends mentioned in the article, you will be able to create an effective marketing plan even for real estate companies.
